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Excerpts from a speech delivered by Edward Abbey at a conference in Vail, Colorado. "I say the industrialization of the Rocky Mountain West is not inevitable and that to plan for such a catastrophe is to invite it ..."

Residents of the tiny mountain community of Shell, Wyoming, emerged from an unlikely planning meeting with smiles on their faces, having created a land-use plan that apparently satisfied even those who were most opposed.

The Northern Cheyenne Indian tribe in southern Montana has become the first land manager to ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to allow it to keep its air clean with a Class I designation, which would affect the planned expansion of the Colstrip coal-fired power plant.

Residents of southern Colorado's San Luis Valley aren't waiting for federal or state lawmakers to solve their energy problems. They have taken the matter into their own hands, and have several dozen working solar systems as proof of their success.

The Bureau of Reclamation's Navajo Indian Irrigation Project brings modern, irrigated agriculture to a parched landscape -- and the possibility of large-scale industry that could compete for the water.

A coalition of 19 conservation organizations warns that the proposed Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976 would severely limit the federal government's ability to protect long-term natural resource values, putting the nation's public lands at risk.

Although swamps have historically been viewed as unattractive and worthless, a building movement -- buoyed by federal laws -- recognizes wetlands as havens for wildlife that also hold and purify water used by humans.

Lack of clear goals for Idaho agriculture becomes more evident as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management wrestles with plans to convert thousands of acres of desert lands managed by that agency into individual private farms sanctioned by the Desert Land Act and the Carey Act.

Damage to sensitive desert ecosystems is causing some to take a hard look at the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971, which was the first time Congress gave full protection to a non-native species animal.

The U.S. Supreme Court has lifted an injunction barring four coal companies and a railroad from proceeding with coal development in Wyoming's eastern Powder River Basin, opening the way to full-scale development of the region's coal.

After losing a lawsuit involving grazing allotments, the Bureau of Land Management has expressed concern that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) -- considered to be the country's most important environmental law -- is making the agency vulnerable to lawsuits that drain time and resources, raising questions about that law's future.

More and more rural residents are starting to resent transmission lines as the lines proliferate across the open spaces of the West, marring the scenery, hindering farm operations, and producing ozone, which may be harmful to crops.

Near the remote ranching community of Circle, Montana, the Burlington Northern railroad company plans to construct a coal gasification plant that would produce not only natural gas but also fertilizer.

Two years after public hearings, the National Park Service is still embroiled in a national controversy over whether or not to allow the establishment of a commercial jetport in Grant Teton National Park in Wyoming.

The Bureau of Reclamation's Oahe Diversion Project, ballyhooed for nearly 30 years as the savior of South Dakota's family farm agricultural economy, is now being bitterly opposed by many of its supposed beneficiaries as construction begins.